sugar plums for charity

I've posted the rest of my auctions on eBay (for now) for Red Cross. There are some Sugar Plum books listed, and if you win, I will sign the books, personalize them if you like, and draw a picture in them as well. Fun! And 100% of the proceeds go to charity.
Thanks!

red cross auction - star wars concept art

Heya folks! I've got a couple things I'll be posting on eBay, 100% of the proceeds will go to Red Cross. The first is an old sketch I did back in the Lucas Learning days. Also, I've got a couple Sugar Plum items I'll be posting over the next few days.


For Haiti: Star Wars Video Game Concept Art


So bid lots, or pass along the word to any Star Wars fan you may know who might be interested. Thanks!
:-)

sugar plum ballerina news round-up

First of all, a big congratulations again to Deborah Underwood, Whoopi Goldberg and the folks at Jump at the Sun for another NAACP image award nomination. Sugar Plum Ballerinas #2 Toeshoe Trouble was nominated for Outstanding Literary Work - Children. Sweet!

Second: the third of the series, Perfectly Prima was released last week. Go buy it. :-) I actually just sent off the cover for book #4 last week as well. I think it should be out more towards the end of the year. Spoiler Alert! Book #4 is Tangerine.

And finally, I'm not sure how long this has been out there, but just discovered that there is an official Sugar Plum Ballerinas website. There are a couple little games, wallpapers and chapter excerpts, things like that.

EDIT: And one last thing - just saw that Whoopi will be on Letterman tomorrow night. Awesome sauce.

little wonder company

 

Here's the link to the website of a project I worked on recently: 

Little Wonder Company.

You can go in and make a custom character to look like your kid, and then order a book with your character in it.

 

Check out the Character Creator - pretty fun to play around with the different colors and hairstyles...

mythy icons

 

 

 

  

after making lots of random supah-cute icons, decided to go with a mythological theme. i quite enjoyed making these. and that is the friendliest cerberus i ever did see. i think it's related to huckleberry hound.

but just got a new project, so we bring a close to icon week. get to try my hand at a graphic novel. we'll see how that goes...

happy hamster time

it's a jelly

Been making little avatar icons at work. Yesterday and today were all about the Cute. I like how the jelly fish turned out.

flying machine

Another Imagine Learning thing. I was supposed to illustrate an example of an early flying machine. So that's what I did. See how that worked? :)

another rhyme scene

Another one of those rhyme scenes, this time for Vietnamese. The three words are: flower, hair and peacock.

things that rhyme in russian but not in english

What? New art? Yeah, so... the past 5 or 6 months or so have been crazy busy, and regrettably for the poor blog, kind of forgot about it. But here! Some illustrations I did a couple months ago for Imagine Learning. There is an activity that the artists love called Intro to Rhyme. Every time we add a new support language, we get to make more rhyme scenes.

Basically you get three random words that rhyme in the other language and have to figure out how to put them all in a scene. This time around we added Russian, and I got to do two of the five scenes. The top scene: tomato, meteor and hallway. Second scene: car, tire, picture.

mud tacos out today

um, yeah... so I do still exist! I'll try to post some new work soon. In the meantime, Mud Tacos is out today - there's even a nifty contest (and a swell little video where you can see some of the book):

http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2009/10/mario_lopez_mud_taco_win_book_copy.php

Provo Children's Book Festival

Hey! So I've been invited to participate in the Provo Children's Book Festival this year at the Academy Library. Come visit. I'll be there all day. I'll be hanging with Guy Francis in the Children's Circle, drawing and stuff, starting 1 pm. And then I think my book signing time is 1:30 to 3:30 or something like that. Which is really a whole lot o' time for the one, maybe two books I'll be signing... ;-)

Provo Children’s Book Festival
Provo City Library at Academy Square
Saturday, May 16, 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
550 North University Avenue

sugar plum #2 media blitz

The next book in the Sugar Plum Ballerinas series is out tomorrow (May 5). There was a mention on The View this morning - sorry, you missed it!

Other Whoopi Goldberg appearances this week:
May 5: Good Morning America (ABC)
May 7: Larry King Live (CNN)

There is also a little excerpt posted at ABC.com

Go Sugar Plum Power!


5.5.09 Edit:
Go here to see the clip from Good Morning America.

mud tacos announced

No, I haven't joined a Mario Lopez fan club. But I am quite personally invested in his latest project. I just found out that there's a little article about it in a recent edition of Publishers Weekly.

Here's a little excerpt:

Actor Mario Lopez, host of EXTRA and America’s Best Dance Crew, has become the latest celebrity to pen a children’s book. Along with his sister Marissa Lopez-Wong, he has signed with Celebra Children’s Books, a Penguin imprint, for a picture book called Mud Tacos!, which will be published on October 15. Maryn Roos, who did the artwork for Whoopi Goldberg’s Sugar Plum Ballerinas, will illustrate, and Steve Meltzer, associate publisher and executive managing editor of Dial and Dutton, will edit the book.

tarot card charms

Last year as I was hunting for Day of the Dead decorations for my big party, I ran across an amazing Frida Kahlo charm necklace, and had to have it. A few months ago, I was thinking about this year's theme (fortune teller) and thought it would be cool to have a fortune teller charm bracelet in the same style.

The jewelry-maker was happy to make one for me, and it arrived today. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. So if you are a fan of charm bracelets, check out Lulu's eBay store: Lulu's Lovely Loot.

sugar plums on leno

Thanks to the ever fabulous Amy Gordon for the Hulu clip clipping tip.

scholastic lucky books

A fun little promotional video on the Scholastic site. Sugarplum Ballerinas starts about 2:14.

UVSC (uvu) Forum on Children's Literature

Children's Literature Forum 2009

Go to that link and you will see that I am one of the presenters or speakers or whatever we are called. I'll be there Friday March 13 and talking mostly about illustrating chapter books. I've never done a big important presentation like this before, so hopefully it won't be horrible and painful for those attending. If anyone attends my presentation... oh no. The paranoia has set in.

chibi/anime nick

Finally! Something not from years ago. This is a project that's still in progress, but here are some samples of the character art. It's been fun to take an existing character (see bottom sample) and then turn him into a sort of anime-type style. I don't know anything about anime or manga but when we were designing the game, and the main character Nick was going to be doing some crazy martial arts stuff, I figured transforming him into an anime type character was really the only way to go.

Then I was supposed to make some icons for happy and unhappy, and instead of a plain ol' boring smiley face, why not make a crazy big-eyed chibi version of Nick? Naturally! Too much fun making those big shiny goopy eyes.

hamm & facebook

About a month ago I wrote about my anti-Facebook stance. Well, a couple weeks ago, after being reassured it wasn't scary, I decided to face down my paranoia and fear of social networking sites and signed up for Facebook. I've never been terribly skilled or interested in networking (that's why I have a rep!) but it's turning out to be pretty cool. So I figured I better mention my turnaround if people find me on Facebook after my mild dissing of said site. :)

Also, I thought I'd give a little illustration world update. I always seem to be mentioning that I'm too busy for this, too busy for that, but all I seem to post are random things I did years ago. Mostly that is because I'm never quite sure what I'm allowed to post or not, so I tend to err on the safe side. But to give a taste of what's coming up, I have two more Whoopi chapter books as well as two picture books coming out this year. I'll post more on each as it comes closer to their release dates.

To continue with the celebrity theme - above is a sample I did (5 years ago) for a possible book written by soccer star Mia Hamm. Didn't get the project, but here is the sample for you to enjoy! This is from back in the day when I actually did a pencil drawing first and scanned it.